From Solution to Creation

July 16,1945 - First Test of the Atomic Bomb

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein

 Most everyone reading these words is familiar with this Einstein quote. We use it to remind ourselves (and, yes, sometimes others) of the need to change our thinking in order to evoke a different present and future. But what if those weren’t Einstein’s actual words? What if over the years his words have been massaged, shifted, and he actually said something much more powerful?

 Curious about the context of the familiar quote, I did a quick search and discovered the apparent origin: a fundraising campaign (more here).

by a group of concerned atomic scientists who had been a part of developing the atom bomb. In 1946, some months after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9 1945 – yes, we are coming upon the 77th anniversary of those tragic, fateful days), Einstein co-founded the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons and to promote world peace. (Muse suggests I let you know we aren’t intending a history lesson this week 😉, but context is sometimes everything.)

 Einstein and the Committee wrote:

 We need two hundred thousand dollars at once for a nation-wide campaign to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.

Oh, they were talking about something bigger than just changing our thinking about the mundane issues that crop up during the day. They were suggesting a bigger pivot, a shift in consciousness as suggested by another Einstein quote:

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

The scientists were in fact creating!

I’ve been wondering whether the pivot suggested in these quotes is about making a shift from our cultural tendency/habit of problem solving to creating. Muse has fed my wondering since the question popped up in a recent conversation with a friend. I was sharing some ideas and learning that I was exploring, many of them from a class I’m attending. “So, what is her solution?” asked my friend.

The question startled me a bit and I don’t recall my response. It may have been some incoherent babble (Muse invokes a chuckle of agreement at that possibility). My friend’s question stayed with me.

In reflecting later, I realized that in most of life I see opportunities to create rather than problems to solve. I read and listen to podcasts, classes, etc. not to solve, but to expand my capacity to create. This wasn’t always my way, my perspective. For many years (okay, decades!) I approached life as a series of problems to be solved. Whether it was situations in my own life or bigger world issues, most everything was a problem that needed solutions.

Noting the difference this shift has made in my life, I think such a pivot may have been what Einstein intended with his words: to shift from searching for solutions to creating anew and co-creating with creation itself. In short, to shift our consciousness.

What does such a shift offer? There is light and lightness in creating and co-creating that engages heart and soul. Creating allows (rather than trying to control) and is curious about the seen and the unseen. It wonders ‘what wants to rise?’.

Solving mostly engages the mind and is often aimed at control. As I look out at our world that generally holds problem solving as its preferred path, I think it’s time to pivot to a new way: creation and collaboration with Life.

Surely the howl of coyote this early morning as I write these words suggests ‘hey humans, look to Nature and all that Nature creates.’ Muse smiles. I wonder if our preoccupation with problems is some sort of cosmic joke. But I digress …

I’m not suggesting that ‘mind’ has no place in the way forward – individually and collectively. Au Contraire!  Mind’s gifts are integral to creation, to engaging heart and soul. Imagine the beautiful world we will create collectively in making this fundamental shift, integrating the gifts of heart, mind, and soul. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine. Then take these words from John O’Donohue into your day …

Beauty inhabits the cutting edge of creativity – mediating between the known and the unknown, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, visible and invisible, chaos and meaning, sound and silence, self and others. John O’Donohue (The Soul as Twilight Threshold in Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

Nature Creates!

To Witness the Beauty of Earth

Beautiful Morning On the Trail

The beauty of the earth is the first beauty. Millions of years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the first-born of creation. Sculpted with huge patience over millennia, landscape has enormous diversity of shape, presence and memory. There is poignancy in beholding the beauty of landscape: often it feels as though it has been waiting for centuries for the recognition and witness of the human eye. John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

 I’ve been on a bit of a retreat for much of the last week. New awareness rising. Love of the land I occupy deepening. Something (perhaps, some ‘things’) stirring, bubbling, shifting. Not good or bad; simply a sense that change is afoot.

 Change in me amidst. Change in our structured world. Change on (and in) Mother Earth. And beyond.

In this emerging awareness few words rise to be shared. Reading ( O’Donohue’s essay (The Affection of the Earth for Us) and reading again feeds the stirring, tapping my shoulder with a call to see beauty, acknowledge beauty EVERYwhere. Especially in the beauty of my place on the planet.

With Muse concurrence I simply leave you with O’Donohue’s closing words, along with the beauty of this sacred place I’m blessed to call home, and with an invitation to open to and embrace the beauty of your place on our marvelous blue marble.

We were once enwombed in the earth and the silence of the body remembers that dark, inner longing. Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, memories from the time before the mind was born. Within us are depths that keep watch. These are the depths that no words can trawl or light unriddle. Our neon times have neglected and evaded the depth-kingdoms of interiority in favour of the ghost realms of cyberspace. Our world becomes reduced to intense but transient foreground. We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us. We have become haunted pilgrims addicted to distraction and driven by the speed and colour of images.

Sacred Mountains, Sacred Place

Pivoting to Unity Consciousness

Mothership Over the Sangres

Unity consciousness is a state of enlightenment where we pierce the mask of illusion which creates separation and fragmentation. Behind the appearance of separation is one unified field of wholeness. Here the seer and the scenery are one. Deepak Chopra

 The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare to state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, the products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two. Ken Wilbur

 Sometimes pivots happen in a flash (or a blinding flash of the obvious!). You experience an ‘aha’ moment that has you, and in the next moment you hold a new perspective. Other pivots are a process, much like changing the direction of a big ship, that occurs over time and distance. One day you’re living from that new perspective. The next, well … not so much. Muse smiles.

 Lasting pivots require practice, attention, and awareness. Daily. Moment to moment. ‘Yep,’ agrees Muse.

 In our world where our language and crumbling systems are built on the illusion of separation, the pivot to unity consciousness seems daunting. Our language has not yet incorporated what science now tells us about the unified field that we are part and parcel of. Our systems, long invested in securing borders; maintaining control; and depending on ideas such as right/wrong, good/bad, we/they, are so ingrained that we are challenged to break free of them.

 These are the musings that rise as I reflect on life’s experiences this week.

 As I journaled one morning, curious about what a couple electrical breakdowns were reflecting, I began to feel the pressure that the world’s systems are under and how my own body’s power systems are likely experiencing the same. The clear message came: ‘TRUST! Trust the enfoldment – all of it, especially that which you don’t prefer. Expect the not to be expected and be light in the dance of intensity and change.’

 I took a breath, letting the crystal clarity of the message settle in as I witnessed dawn bringing light to the woods out back. The boundary between those woods and me evaporated. I am there. The trees and landscape are here. There is no ‘here’ or ‘there’. In that blissful moment the illusion of separation vanished. In that moment I experience the reality that I AM ONE with ALL that is.

 As I sat with the experience, the stream continued to flow:

• I am One with all life and ALL is life.

• I am One with the landfill as surely as I am One with the beautiful peaks.

• I am One with the entities of corporate/degenerative agriculture as surely as I am One with regenerative farmers and ranchers.

• I am One with the war mongers as surely as I am One with those who work for and live in peace.

• I am One with the plastic in the oceans as surely as I am One with the whales, dolphins, and all beings in the seas.

• I am One with those who spread hate as surely as I am One with those whose words and deeds uplift and spread kindness, love, and light.

• I am One with disease as surely as I am One with health.

 This is what I/we know deep in my/our bones, my being. May my words speak this truth. May my life reflect this knowing as I map, navigate, and make choices in the territory of life’s gifts and experiences. May the illusions of separation fall as reality of who I am/we are deepens in my/our awareness. So Be It!

Resilience! After Winter Comes Spring

Present In the Flow of Life

The Labyrinth in the Woods Out Back Awaits …

Scattered thoughts like a herd stampeding go nowhere, fast.

The Eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.  Terry Tempest Williams, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

Muse wasn’t successful getting my attention in the early morning quiet that is typically ‘our’ time. I’d been thinking about regeneration and, wanting that to be this week’s focus, decided to do more reading online. Now, after our morning walk and breaking fast, I find myself challenged to engage Muse. Reminded I am of a ditty penned in a workshop 33 years ago - Scattered thoughts like a herd stampeding go nowhere, fast - for this morning finds my thoughts scattered from the macro of mostly discouraging world events and exciting possibilities of designing life in alignment with regenerative principles to the micro of life’s daily details. Today those ‘details’ are focused on preparing for Zadie Byrd’s second eye surgery tomorrow.

Somewhere between the two – yet very present this day – is a deep sadness that runs from micro to macro, from me and my cells to Mother Earth, Nature and ALL her beings. I choose not to let it be the driver of this (and hopefully any) day while recognizing that on another day grief and sadness may need to be tended.

Writing this thought, I’m reminded of a story shared by author, activist Terry Tempest Williams in a recent talk. In conversation with three rather powerful men (think Presidential cabinet types) she asked where their grief lived. Two responded sincerely about their deep feelings of concern. The third replied that he wanted to ‘keep the conversation positive’ and said to Terry, “You are married to sorrow.” She replied, “No. I choose not to look away.”

Her response highlights for me one of the strengths of the Feminine: choosing not to deny, to look away from the degradation of Nature, of Mother Earth, of one another; yet not getting entangled in the muck. A tricky and delicate dance this is, a dance that calls forth a key element of Divine Feminine energy, aka ‘Love’: seeking, finding, as well as creating new paths forward individually and collectively. Love acknowledges. Love questions. Love collaborates. Love co-creates. Love acts. This love is not gender specific, found only in the female form, etc. The love of the Divine Feminine simply IS.

Muse chuckles noting that these thoughts don’t seem ‘scattered’ at all, and I’m aware that my earlier sadness has lifted. Zadie Byrd, back in her ‘cone of courage’, sleeps nearby, her way of preparing for tomorrow. The wind has calmed and the labyrinth in the woods out back awaits my presence.

This 454th (yes, I’m counting) post has found its way to the page, the page of my journal and the pages of my life. Regeneration in action on a micro scale! Engaging Muse is a journey into the unknown, taking the first step, writing that first word, and discovering where the flow will lead. Present to the present while holding curiosity and wonder about what we can create for the time beyond.

Sleeping is the Best …

Pivot to Harmony - Earth Day, Every Day

Moonrise Over the Sangres

Our role with nature is to work in harmony with it to bring its elements to the highest degree of their manifestation. Gregge Tiffen

 … a shared love of Nature was the most political act of all. Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge)

 Two years ago, on the 50th Earth Day, I pivoted my weekly blog from ‘The Zone’ to ‘The Pivot’ because we need new stories, new ways of being to navigate our world toward justice. Not just justice for we humans, but justice for ALL beings, especially our home, Mother Earth. One day is not enough to care for Mother Earth, our home.

 One day is not enough to care. One day is not enough to bring justice. Earth-care like self-care requires our attention and awareness, our presence, 24/7. Or, as author Terry Tempest Williams says, Earth-care IS self-care.

 As I’ve reflected on this 52nd Earth Day and listened to many women thought leaders share reflections and actions from their hearts about the state of our world, our Earth, ourselves, the word harmony rises to surface once again as it has in past Earth Day posts.  Harmony within. Harmony with one another. Harmony with Nature. Harmony with Mother Earth. [Check out Women Working for the Earth Summit for replays. Or KGNU Boulder’s Connections interview on Earth Day.]

 I’m not suggesting that we should always agree or forego our beliefs for the sake of harmony. Indeed, harmony requires that we speak our voice. To follow this course would compromise our harmony within.  I’m not suggesting that we think only positive thoughts or simply look away from that which triggers our anger, our angst, our grief at what is lost and what we are losing daily. That would undermine our integrity.

 Muse suggests that we/I need to engage more deeply with all of life in harmonious ways. The Universe is designed in harmony and our dominion with the Earth is to maintain and restore that harmony. With every thought, every word, every deed we are contributing to harmony that supports Nature and the Earth or we are contributing to disharmony, putting Mother Earth in the position of taking drastic action to rebalance. 

Our thoughts matter. Our words matter. How we maintain our bodies, our homes and care for our pets and our plants matter.  Even how we sleep matters.  Every thought I have and every word I speak never dies. My thoughts and yours contribute to mass consciousness moment by moment, day to day. The planet responds to that consciousness. That is her design.  

 Harmony matters. Let us make each and every day Mother Earth Day by depositing thoughts of harmony into the bank of the collective consciousness. Let us face the challenges of injustice with love and with courage rather than fear and rancor. Let us question our daily choices with curiosity and care rather than rigid fundamentalism of any flavor.

 May I experience and live harmony within. May I live in harmony with others, especially those with whom I disagree. May my choices moment to moment reflect Harmony with Nature and Harmony with Mother Earth. This is my prayer for self and humanity.

Full Moon over the Woods Out Back

From the Center of Self

Words of wisdom from a favorite author!

When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth. Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift From the Sea)

The Earth thinks in circles. She dreams in spirals and nautilus shell revolutions. She tells her stories across eons. Her epics are epochs. Rivera Sun (Winds of Change – book 3 in the Dandelion trilogy – www.riverasun.com).

Circling and spiraling amidst a number of atypical (for blog day) activities I’m finally settling in with Muse to discover what wants to emerge in this week’s Pivot.

As winds of change blow seemingly around the globe, here in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of southern Colorado, strong winds are blowing bringing dust, red flag/fire weather watch warnings, and wintry temperatures. Zadie Byrd and I are challenged to get out for our walks and keep them short, focused on her ‘business’ and our safety.

It’s the kind of intense wind that rips shingles from roofs, breaks tree limbs and trunks, and picks up all manner of unanchored debris. Having once been grazed by the outer branches of a falling tree that snapped as a sudden wind came up in the woods, I’m mindful and cautious. I sense something is being cleared. Blown away to make way for the new within me and in the world. That’s what winds of change do.

The change I sense within runs deep. A deepening of care – for self, for my canine companion, for friends, and for this community that is my home. The deepening care seems to call forth new strength, resilience, and trust. A felt sense that life is unfolding as it must for the evolution of consciousness, mine individually and ours collectively as a human family that is part of the family of all Beings on the planetary Being herself: Gaia, Great Mother Earth.

In conversation with a friend and spiritual mentor a few days back, I was sharing this deepened sense of trust and greater discernment. “With trust comes greater capacity to love and less tendency/need to judge,” she mused. As I allow that to settle in deep, I feel I’ve made a leap in my being.

In some way I sense that the dog attack has guided me to the center of myself that Lindbergh speaks of. I wonder whether I needed such a dramatic call and quickly set that query aside, grateful that for the support and the rapid rate of our healing and recovery. I find joy in caring for Zadie Byrd and for me as well as in finding ways to thank the small army of friends who blessed us with an abundance of love and care. I find peace as I come to terms with the event and discover that I harbor no anger. Rather I feel compassion for the canine that attacked and for its human. I feel love for those who supported me, creating community, our own version of heaven on earth.

Although I don’t have a nautilus shell to put to my ear to hear the earth, I listen to the wind, to the birds, to the trees. I converse with Zadie Byrd, knowing all of nature has stories to tell and wisdom to share as we navigate the winds of change. May I listen well from the center of my Being to the center of the Being that is Mother Earth.

Mother Earth callling … Am I listening?

Presence - Up and Over the Divides

Quick Pic of the Divide on a Cold, Blustery Day

The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. Thich Nhat Hanh

Zadie Byrd and I were up and, on the road, early this morning, traversing the Continental Divide at North Cochetopa Pass (10,135 feet), occupied land of the Utes, Cochetopa being the Ute word for ‘pass of the buffalo’. The two-lane road of our route winds through short canyons on either side of the pass, each with distinct characteristics, both beautiful in their distinctness.

As mind wandered in many directions, Muse called me to the present moment, to attending to the drive and to keen awareness of the sense of home I feel in canyon country. Wondering about that, I asked ‘what is it about canyons that is so comforting?’. Immediately I felt the presence of ancestors, life in these mountains across the ages, human life, animal life – I could almost see the buffalo roaming, abundant life with no fences, utility poles, pavement or other modern accoutrements. I sense that I lived in that time and eons before. I felt the infinite nature of life and the reality that everywhere is home.

The felt sense was a gift of the present moment. One only accessible when wandering mind was invited to rest and gems of the moment allowed to rise. The rubble of worry about past and future is just that: rubble. Gemstones are in the awareness of this present moment. So too is attention to the matters of the road, sensing the need to slow down then discovering deer crossing the road around a curve ahead.

The purpose of our trip over and back was for a new veterinarian to examine Zadie’s eye, which has continued to be inflamed. The level of attention and care we received was extraordinary (in contrast to the recent surgery and follow-up), and we returned home back over the divide weary, but pleased and confident that the new approach and protocol has Zadie Byrd on the road to being her bright-eyed self in both eyes once again.

As I settled in with Muse to reflect and write, I’m present to Zadie’s irritation in the left eye, the ‘input’ side of the body. I’ve thought about this throughout this experience, wondering what irritations in me she may be reflecting. What do I need to clean up to support her healing (and my own)? Am I exercising dominion that serves me when I react to the absurdities of elected officials in ways that are perhaps equally absurd? What about when I feel and express annoyance toward another? What am I present to in those moments?

Mind says, ‘surely there is more to say this week …’. Muse says, ‘enough – presence in the moment requires few words or deeds, simply awareness; just BE that’. And so, for now, I BE. Clearer dominion and choices to follow!

Winding Our Way Through Gunnison Canyon

Pivot to Inspirations and Provocations

I call this ‘Painting What You See’ (found image, unknown source)

In the greatest cultures of the ancient world there was a stairway between the human and the divine. The Earth and the cosmos were addressed as "thou," not "it". People felt they participated in a great cosmic mystery of which they were a part. People experienced the divine as imminent in the material world. Nature and the cosmos were ensouled with divine presence. Ceremonies like those performed at Stonehenge ... connected Earth with heaven and strengthened the sense of participation in a divine reality.  Anne Baring

What if I really believed everything is in divine order? Quanita Roberson

Over the past week or so I’ve intentionally put my attention on that which informs, inspires, and provokes me to reflect. I’m not ignoring the multiplicity of crises that we are each a part of. And I’m doing my best not to feed the fear and separation from which our crises arise. Not looking to be distracted or entertained, but rather to be informed and guided more deeply to understand and act in ways that honor Nature, humanity, and the divine.

I wonder how I can live more fully into my instinctive knowing that Nature, humanity, and the divine are not separate. Isn’t that what maturity is? How can I grow up?

The exploration has taken me on several tracks, discovering new (to me) voices profound in their wisdom, reminding me that way back in college days (decades ago!) I wondered what it would be like to become a philosopher. Perhaps that’s a seed now breaking through the soil of my life.

Early this morning as I wandered over the week’s landscape and began to wonder (in truth, I felt quite unclear and a bit worried) where Muse and I would go with today’s post, Muse directed, “just sit down and WRITE!”. Ah, yes, pick up the pen and allow the words to come. To flow. Allow the joy of discovery that rises when I step into the unknown.

For surely, we are in a time when we are called to make peace with the unknown. Befriend her. Perhaps even embrace her with our hint of ‘knowing’ that we are co-creating the story, not observers or victims on the journey. How am I participating in this co-creation?

How will the disparate thought threads from my exploration weave together? Heck, will they?

Something has shifted in my awareness about our language: that so much of it is formed around the masculine. The scales of language today are weighted with the yang energy favored in our culture. Is it any wonder that conflict and war continue to prevail? How can we balance the scales, perhaps even tip them toward yin energy? The feminine? The caring of the Great Mother?

This awareness has me want to be care-filled rather than habitual in choosing the words I write and speak for surely my habits of language were all too often curated by the prevailing energy.

That means slowing down. Discerning what is mine to do, to say. Letting go of all that is not. Perhaps some of the disparate threads don’t belong in this weave. Perhaps they are not mine to weave. Release and trust the wind to carry them where they need to be. They will return if meant to be.

It means that my habits need new curators, mid-wives for birthing new words, new ways, new habits, new stories that we so long for. Perhaps my explorations are indeed a search for impassioned, caring voices of The New to inspire, provoke, and to share when Muse and I settle in to write. Muse nods in agreement, reminding me that the above quotes are from new (to me) sage women each with deep connection to the divine and each taking care in the words they speak. I discovered them listening in to an amazing Humanity Rising panel discussion on feminism and democracy (click here to listen). I’m adding both of them to my curator team.

Likewise it means observing and listening to Zadie Byrd with expanded senses. She seems aligned with this direction, as she indicated to our animal communicator in a session this morning, sharing that she doesn’t care for the energy of the traditional veterinarian who did her eyelid surgery and has been doing the follow-up to clear her eye of what seems to be some sort of infection. “I want to see the ‘herbal vet’,” she said. “I like her energy. It’s freer.” Seems Ms. Byrd is to be on the curator team as well, perhaps as mascot.

Life and learning continue to unfold. Moment to moment we choose where to put our attention and what to paint from where that attention lands. I feel the divine as I grok and aim to live more fully into being part of ‘a great cosmic mystery’.

What if I really believed that everything is in divine order?

Snowy Peaks! Blessed Moisture! Grateful Heart!

The World Needs Our Light!

Snow! Blessed BE the Snow!

The world needs our light. And so do we!

As I was lighting candles on my altar this snowy morning, a felt sense from deep within washed over me: ‘the world needs our light.’ Whose light? Was this the Muse gently nudging my morning exploration, prompting the focus of today’s post?

I’ve only recently begun to light more than one small candle each morning and to be intentional about my purpose for each. Why do I light this green candle? For the health and well-being of all beings, including the planetary being; sometimes including the healing journey of an individual who has made that request. The yellow? Protection. The white? Purity and love. And, on I went for a few brief moments until seven candles were lit. Hand over heart, I thanked the light. Grateful for the ritual that’s replaced what had become my mindless ’habit’ of lighting a single candle.

Grateful too for the inspirations and insights that come when mindless habit gives way to awareness, to ritual, to intention. Isn’t ‘this’ the light our world longs for with its often-silent tears as well as its not so silent cries? Mindfulness. Awareness. Purposefulness. In each moment. Each smile. Each word. Each movement. Each choice made with clarity, purpose, awareness. And, with love.

I imagine the Muse smiling. I’m certain they get some credit for my shift, although I know that in Muse-land there is none of the ego’s need for scorekeeping. That’s how life is in the unseen world, the other side of the veil where I’m certain the Muse resides (if indeed Muse has ‘residence’ in a ‘place’).

Just before my candle ritual (and after getting a warming fire going in the stove), I’d opened the computer to check the weather forecast since the ‘heavy’ snow of yesterday’s forecast brought only about three inches. I was curious (and hopeful!) – is there more? ‘Yes’ says our local weather tracker.

While getting to the weather site, my eyes landed on an email from a colleague/friend across the pond. Its subject line was the name of an esteemed coaching colleague. Sensing the content, I took a quick look, a look that confirmed his sudden passing earlier this week. A breath taken, I sent a short note to my friend, knowing that it was time for our voices to connect.

Complete with that, I felt a nudge to revisit a poem read several days ago. Following that nudge led me to the prolific poet’s post from yesterday, the day of a new moon. I found it a profound and beautiful reminder that the light of love is always present and that light is to be shared.

At the Dark of the Moon

As you unfold your wet wings,

dear vulnerable one,

the moon rests from our gaze;

she, also, tender,

At the dark of the moon,

the sun still shines

on the side of her we cannot see.

You, too, earthling,

receive the light of love

even when you are blind to it.

Here, take mine,

now when you have what you need.

When it’s someone else’s turn

to swim in the frightening Dark,

you can offer yours,

you can pass it on,

the invisible and real

light of love

from the other side

of the beautiful moon.

---Susa Silvermarie

 Yesterday, February 1, was also the Chinese New Year (fare-the-well Ox. Welcome year of the Tiger!) and Imbolic, the Celtic celebration of Brigid. Each in their unique ways, celebrations of light and of nature. Reminders indeed that, yes, there IS much to celebrate in life. Celebration is light!

On this auspicious day of ‘twos’ – 2-2-2022 – let us double our light wherever we go, we stay, we BE. For we, each of us, you and me, need our light. Not in denial or avoidance of darkness, but to its counterpoint and opening to transforming darkness into light. This day my light will shine with snow shovel in hand … the morning’s three inches have grown to six or more. Big, beautiful flakes continue to fall. Blessed BE the Light and Blessed BE the Snow!

Cordially, Cheerfully Yours from the Snowy Neighborhood …

What Forms Us?

The Elk - Camerashy, unlike their deer cousins.

We speak a lot about information. What is information, really? It is that which comes in and forms us. Charles Eisenstein

These words stopped me, landing deep within as I read Charles Eisenstein’s recent essay, Wanna Join Me in a News Fast? several days ago. They’ve been with me, beckoning some call from within, the Muse taking note and applauding each time I hit the delete key rather than opening one of the news sources that I frequently scan.

I can’t say for how long I’ll join in fasting from news, but doing so feels like an act of empowerment, of more consciously choosing where to put my attention and focus. What constitutes ‘news’ anyway?

Much so-called ‘information’ seems designed to keep me ‘IN formation’ with what the culture bids, steeped in worry and fear about a cornucopia of concerns. Eisenstein’s suggestion that information is that which comes in and forms us evoked the reminder that ‘that which comes in’ is that which I allow in. I choose. And with that reminder, an awareness to look anew at what I allow to come in, what I invite to form me.

How will my choices shift when I take on the perspective that every click to open an email or follow a link (or open a magazine, a book, a piece of mail or watch a movie or documentary, listen to music, etc.) is an invitation to participate in forming me? The Muse challenges me to examine my choices about what and who is on my ‘invitation list’. ‘Just how selective are you,’ Muse prods, ‘in what you invite in?’ Of course, I like to think that I’m very conscious and selective about such things.

But am I really? How many of my ‘invites’ truly contribute to the wellbeing of my body, my mind, my spirit? To shifting so that I live in greater harmony with my values and with Mother Earth? To my happiness and joy?

Perhaps it’s a good time to go beyond ‘delete this email’ to click the ‘unsubscribe’ button on some sources.

Do my choices invite sources that inspire and provide intelligence for creating a new story for humankind and the planet or evoke deep introspection from which new insights can emerge? Are they aligned with my purpose – planting and nurturing seeds of change?

Or do I all too often simply feed an addiction to be ‘informed’ so that I seem intelligent to myself and others? Or as entertainment?

How much and what kind of information do I really need? Who will I invite to ‘inform’ me on this journey called ‘Life’?

As I write these last words Raven lands in a pine just outside my window, its ‘caw’ a reminder that Nature has much to offer IN forming me when I invite and listen. Likewise Raven offers confirmation that there is magic to be discovered in looking anew at what I choose to form me. I’m reminded of a small elk herd that wandered through the woods a few days ago and of the buck who brought his extended family to the labyrinth after last week’s post. How does the natural environment form and inform me?

Family Member on Her Way to the Labyrinth